Read Online Leaving the Atocha Station by Ben Lerner - Free Book Online
Authors: Ben Lerner
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certainly made no effort to introduce me into the conversation; I could only suspect my presence was a restraint, that Isabel wanted to work out whatever was between them, and hoped Rufina would rein in her behavior and talk in the company of a stranger, especially talk about a previous boyfriend. The silence was evidently oppressive to Isabel, who knew I wouldn’t break it, and finally she rose and said she had to go to the bathroom, leaving me with Rufina. I was in fact very interested in Rufina, in how she made a living, where she was from, how long she had lived outside Toledo and why, not to mention how old she was, if she was married, if she was Isabel’s blood relation, what had happened with the boyfriend, etc., but I wasn’t about to speak. After another length of silence, Rufina stood up, saying something about my drink, which she took to the kitchen to refill.
Alone on the porch, I looked out into the dark; I imagined I could see the dogs moving somewhere in the yard, and far beyond the yard I could see a few ruby taillights disappearing on a curve. I began to imagine my apartment in Madrid, imagined it at that instant, dark, but filled with noise from La Plaza Santa Ana, imagined the espresso machine at rest, the cheap but inoffensive furniture the apartment came with, furniture that would remain when I left, the few old postcards I’d purchased from El Rastro and scotch-taped to the wall. Then my other rooms: Brighton Street, mattress on the floor, Hope Street, with its little drafting table, dorms, which were terrible, then Greenwood, Jewell Street, Huntoon and my crib, which I could not in fact remember, imagined them at that instant, now furnished and occupied by others. Then I could feel each room around me as I imagined it, and the dark beyond the porch would become the dark of Topeka or Providence. Then it was the dark of my seventh or fifteenth or twentieth year, each dark with a slightly different shape or shapeliness, the sky, when I was younger, more concave. And then it was Rufina’s porch again, but imagined from a future room surrounded by a future dark, a room where I was writing, maybe this.
At some point I realized I had been lost in these reveries, if that’s what they were, for longer than it took to make a drink or take a piss. I listened hard and could hear voices, voices I could tell were raised; Isabel and Rufina were arguing somewhere in the house, in a room whose door they’d shut. I became fascinated with this phenomenon of hearing loud voices at a distance, in trying to account for how I knew they were loud when I could barely hear them, something about their shape or shapeliness, or the way they filtered through the walls, and I reached for my notebook to write this down, although there wasn’t really light to write by, when suddenly I stopped and blushed, at least my face was hot. Why would I take notes when Isabel wasn’t around to see me take them? I’d never taken notes before; I carried around my bag because of my drugs, not because I intended to work on my “translations,” and the idea of actually being one of those poets who was constantly subject to fits of inspiration repelled me; I was unashamed to pretend to be inspired in front of Isabel, but that I had just believed myself inspired shamed me.
I took my notebook from the bag, but only to use it as a surface; I rubbed a cigarette between my thumb and forefinger to loosen the tobacco and emptied it onto the notebook cover. Then I took the little egg-shaped mass of hash out of my pocket, so shaped because it had been transported, wrapped in plastic, up someone’s ass, found my lighter, heated and flaked a quantity of hash into the tobacco, then blew carefully into the empty cigarette paper, inflating it a little, and shook the mixture back into the cigarette, twisting the end of the paper to keep it from spilling. Finally, I removed the cottony filter with my teeth. The voices were getting louder.
I lit the
Alone on the porch, I looked out into the dark; I imagined I could see the dogs moving somewhere in the yard, and far beyond the yard I could see a few ruby taillights disappearing on a curve. I began to imagine my apartment in Madrid, imagined it at that instant, dark, but filled with noise from La Plaza Santa Ana, imagined the espresso machine at rest, the cheap but inoffensive furniture the apartment came with, furniture that would remain when I left, the few old postcards I’d purchased from El Rastro and scotch-taped to the wall. Then my other rooms: Brighton Street, mattress on the floor, Hope Street, with its little drafting table, dorms, which were terrible, then Greenwood, Jewell Street, Huntoon and my crib, which I could not in fact remember, imagined them at that instant, now furnished and occupied by others. Then I could feel each room around me as I imagined it, and the dark beyond the porch would become the dark of Topeka or Providence. Then it was the dark of my seventh or fifteenth or twentieth year, each dark with a slightly different shape or shapeliness, the sky, when I was younger, more concave. And then it was Rufina’s porch again, but imagined from a future room surrounded by a future dark, a room where I was writing, maybe this.
At some point I realized I had been lost in these reveries, if that’s what they were, for longer than it took to make a drink or take a piss. I listened hard and could hear voices, voices I could tell were raised; Isabel and Rufina were arguing somewhere in the house, in a room whose door they’d shut. I became fascinated with this phenomenon of hearing loud voices at a distance, in trying to account for how I knew they were loud when I could barely hear them, something about their shape or shapeliness, or the way they filtered through the walls, and I reached for my notebook to write this down, although there wasn’t really light to write by, when suddenly I stopped and blushed, at least my face was hot. Why would I take notes when Isabel wasn’t around to see me take them? I’d never taken notes before; I carried around my bag because of my drugs, not because I intended to work on my “translations,” and the idea of actually being one of those poets who was constantly subject to fits of inspiration repelled me; I was unashamed to pretend to be inspired in front of Isabel, but that I had just believed myself inspired shamed me.
I took my notebook from the bag, but only to use it as a surface; I rubbed a cigarette between my thumb and forefinger to loosen the tobacco and emptied it onto the notebook cover. Then I took the little egg-shaped mass of hash out of my pocket, so shaped because it had been transported, wrapped in plastic, up someone’s ass, found my lighter, heated and flaked a quantity of hash into the tobacco, then blew carefully into the empty cigarette paper, inflating it a little, and shook the mixture back into the cigarette, twisting the end of the paper to keep it from spilling. Finally, I removed the cottony filter with my teeth. The voices were getting louder.
I lit the
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